Japanese Gothic is a very interesting ghost story

I’ll give the usual warning: It’s a scary book Japanese Gothic I am very good at going in with as little information as possible. Warnings about violence, domestic violence, self-harm, and mental illness. If you’re okay with that, take a moment to think about it. While I’ll try to keep this spoiler-free, there will be some places I can’t avoid.

Lee Turner is an NYU student in 2026 who fled to Japan to live with his father after his roommate was killed. He can’t remember why he did it, or where he hid the body, in part because Lee stumbles through life in a haze of drugs ranging from Benadryl to Ativan.

Skipping a century and a half, Sen Iwasaki is the daughter of a samurai, trained by her father to be a warrior. He lives in hiding with his family, many years after the Samurai were abolished. His father is one of the few survivors of the Satsuma Rebellion, where samurai tried to attack Emperor Meiji’s imperial army and were mercilessly crushed.

What the two share is a house. About 150 years after the Sen family fled to the house behind the sword, so did Lee, and a door opened between their worlds.

Lee believes that Sen is a bridge to the world of the dead. He thinks that through the woman, he can find out what happened to his mother, who disappeared when she was only 12 years old.

From here, the secrets just pile up. Why does the door between their worlds open sometimes? How did Sen die? Why is Hina (Lee’s father’s girlfriend) acting strange? Why didn’t Seni’s father die on the battlefield?

Some of the twists and turns you’ll see coming, but that doesn’t take away from the experience. The plot is confusing and full of unreliable narrators. The truth is finally revealed in a climax that somehow feels more like a dream than the rest of the novel.

In the hands of a younger writer, such a confusing story would be unnecessarily confusing. But Baker’s vision is clear; on the contrary, his prose is beautiful and mysterious. There are many passages that describe in detail the salty taste of the blood, the teeth coming out of the skull, and the “strings” of the intestines. But there are also passages that describe the taste of food “TV static,” or Sen if it’s not a girl, but “light analysis.” This is one of my favorite quotes: “Once upon a time, the house felt like it was beating with a heartbeat.

Where, Japanese Gothic It’s not just about saving time. It tackles generational trauma, child abuse, colonialism, leadership, and mental health. It is similar to folk horror, crime thrillers, and gothic fiction. And the most important thing is that, it is a compelling read.